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Posted: |
Jun 8, 2009 - 3:59 PM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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He, he....the stuff you have to watch because it features one of your favourite artists and bands.... 
This is a cheapo direct-to-TV prequel from 1997 about the friendly ghost. And it shows. Special effects/computer ghosts are crummy at best (even taking into consideration that it's a 12 year old film), plot is contrived and everything is about as charming as an episode of Teletubbies, which is to say none! It's a bit sad to see guys like Steve Guttenberg reduced to this, not to mention the vocal talents of James Earl Jones.
Still, I'm sure it goes home with the kids. There are farting jokes, after all. 
Udi Harpaz is the composer, of whom I have never heard, and although impressive in orchestral scope and melody, is basically a pastiche of Williams and the original Horner score, which again was a pastiche of Elfman.
But the song selection is quite interesting. The director is apparently a fan of 80's stuff, like Bobby McFerrin or Kool & The Gang. And, of course, it also contains an edited version of "No One Lives Forever" in what must be one of the last Oingo Boingo appearances in a mainstream movie. It's basically just a few phrases from the song, most likely used for the ghoulish lyrics "let's have a party, there's a full moon in the sky, it's the hour of the wolf and we don't wanna die...." etc. to underscore a Commodore-quality CGI scene of ghosts checking in at a Ghost School.
The soundtrack contains this song, but no score, unfortunately. I'm not sure this will be of ANY interest to members of this forum, but there you go.
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Sure, Udi Harpaz is interesting!
He scored 11 episodes of Airwolf in 1985/86, and his music is surely in the Sylvester Levay vein. Some of his selections are available on the DeLuxe Airwolf 2CD by Mark Cairns from 1999.
Harpaz also scored Annihilator with Levay in 1986. This one features a brilliant 3 minute instrumental main theme very reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder, which I am lucky enough to have on a CDR...
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Casper Meets Wendy (Udi Harpaz; in fact, samples from both films can be found at his website)
Addams Family Reunion (Amotz Plessner)
Richie Rich's Christmas Wish (Deddy Tzur)
Digimon: the Movie (Harpaz/Plessner)
What I wouldn't give for releases...
As long as your name contains a "Z", you're hired, apparently!
More likely, the letter their names all have in common is the Hebrew letter "Tzadi."
(Also spelled "Tzadik," "Zadi," "Zadik," etc.) It's pronounced as the combination of a T sound and a Z sound.
They're all Israeli names.
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Funny Casper should be mentioned - I did some work on the TV series that also stemmed from the 1995 Casper movie and one of my segments was just recently posted. You might find it amusing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MveE9jie0AI
This was the first time I ever had an orchestrator: Given the sort of assembly line approach, once my script and demo left my hands I was done and it was handed off to, in my case, either Ron Grant, Bruce Babcock or Charles Fernandez (who got well deserved Emmys for their music direction on this show). At the time, I never even met them! (I only met Ron Grant briefly after the show had been cancelled).
Funny, while my name doesn't have a Z, I was, in part, named after Israeli statesman Abba Eban. Could that be how I got the job? I just thought they liked my pitch!
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